P.E. teachers outearn science teachers

There are 19 gym teachers in the Farmington School District who make more than $85,000 a year each. The average gym teacher’s salary in Farmington is $75,035. By comparison, the science teachers in that district make $68,483 per year on average.

. . . In the Woodhaven-Brownstown district, 18.5 (FTE) science teachers average some $58,400 per year in salary, while 12 gym teachers averaged nearly $76,700. In Harrison, science teachers earned $49,000 on average while gym teachers averaged $62,000.

Science teachers — especially those educated in physics and chemistry — have private-sector options, so they’re always in short supply. But districts don’t pay more to keep teachers with hard-to-find skills. With fewer options in the private sector, P.E. teachers stay longer, climbing the seniority-based pay scale.

Comments

I would suspect that the main reason Phys Ed teachers make more is because many of them also coach sports – at an extra, sometimes quite large, stipend. Science teachers usually don’t earn hefty stipends for the after-school work *they* do: correcting papers, designing labs, grading tests, etc.

If it weren’t for state law districts wouldn’t bother with teacher’s who’ve sought training to deal with special ed kids – any old, run-of-the-mill teacher would’ve been shoved into the slot with zero regard for even theoretical efficacy.

Have to say my kids were involved in interscholastic sports from eighth grade to graduation and I liked what they learned about one thing and another in addition to the actual sport and associated skills and conditioning.
That’s because, with one or two exceptions, their coaches were pretty good people, and they learned other things when coached by buttheads.
My son’s varsity bball coach was a math teacher, his football coach a science teacher, his tennis coach a math teacher. The girls’ basketball coach was a PE teacher. Don’t recall the other folks. So when you’re coaching varsity sports and doing conventional teaching, I think payment is justified.

My wife got a stipend for running the foreign exchange student club when she taught Spanish in high school. I don’t recall what it was, but like most, you can earn it, earn it and do a good bit over, or back up to the pay table in embarrassment. She did a good bit over.